Jagex Finally Releases PvP Vision

[Mojo]

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/gielinor-gazette-march-2020?oldschool=1

 

Quote

Firstly, we understand your frustration at the lack of visible progress with PvP. We are working on it, and here we’ll go into some detail about what exactly we’ve been doing.

We acknowledge that up to now our approach to PvP has been piecemeal at best, and lacked a holistic view of what PvP is and how PvP fits within Old School.

We’re deep in the process of building a vision and whilst we’re not yet ready to share explicit details, we can talk about the problems we face and how we might solve them.

 

Fragmentation

We of course want to ‘fix PvP’, but actually it’s quite difficult to establish what exactly this means because different people have different ideas about what needs to be ‘fixed’.

The reality is that PvPers are fragmented across multiple different activities and styles. They make up roughly 5% of our playerbase (it’s worth noting that other ‘general’ MMOs have a PvPer representation of around 5-10%).

Some PvPers are Bounty Hunter players (or Last Man Standing) or they play Castle Wars, or Clan Wars. They might PK in the Wilderness, but they only terrorise multi-combat areas, or they exclusively operate in single-combat areas. They might only play on PvP worlds, or they might only play Deadman. Their accounts could be a general ‘main’ account, or it could be a pure, or another type of restricted build. Those player types are then further divided according to the timezone they live in, and the times they’re active in the game.

What we’ve found is that when we’ve tried to make changes to appease one of these groups, we might negatively impact another.

Considering this fragmentation, our main goal is to unite all players (not just PvPers) under a single vision which guides content updates, events, and manages their expectations.

 

The Golden Age

It’s not uncommon to hear gamers talk about a golden age of a game. This is true not just of RuneScape or Old School, but of any game that has existed for a long time. It’s also not uncommon for there to be disagreement of when this golden age is. You might prefer the experience of marauding deep in the Wilderness of 2005. Others might pine for Edgeville as it was in 2011, rife with Korasi’s and Curses. Some players might put the likes of Soul Wars and Stealing Creation on a pedestal, but other players might vehemently believe that these are just fun minigames and should not be considered PvP updates.

Rather than recreate these experiences as they were, we’re trying to identify what qualities made them special, and use them to guide future updates.

 

Welcoming New PvPers

One thing that can be widely agreed on is how difficult it is to introduce new players to PvP. We’ve identified three reasons for this difficulty.

Skill gap. The difference between an established PKer and somebody dipping their toes into PvP content for the first time is huge. Some activities, like Last Man Standing, have mechanics which try to bridge gulfs between accounts, like always-on Prayer to mitigate flicking or making equal account builds. But this isn’t enough. Any two players might have the same levels and equipment, but the ability to quickly switch gear and prayers and attack styles will reign supreme.

Complicated systems. Back in the day, PKing was far simpler, mechanically speaking, than it is now. You’d kill a player and you’d get their stuff. The introduction of new mechanics which are specific to certain worlds, or certain areas, can be hard for new players to grasp. If we look at the most recent iteration of Bounty Hunter, it represents one of the more extreme examples of overly complicated systems. A player had to visit an NPC to use their own GP to purchase an item to hold in their inventory. If they defeated an opponent who had the same item in their inventory, then that item would be upgraded, which would ultimately increase its value. The player could then go back to the NPC and sell the item for more GP. That’s without considering the separate existence of Bounty Hunter Points, tasks, and hotspots. It’s convoluted, and it’s a far cry from the kill-a-player-take-their-stuff age.

Toxicity. We’ve all seen the spade memes, but the reality is that the PvP scene can be daunting to new players because of the levels of toxicity associated with the community. Other games have seen great success in tackling toxicity in their PvP scene, and we must do the same.

 

Current Status

Our vision for PvP is still very much a work in progress, but we’d to share as much as we can.

 

Our current PvP mission statement:

 

• We will consolidate and unite the PvP scene to position it for future growth.
• The Wilderness is where emergent dangerous PvP gameplay takes place.
• Minigames and events exist to offer unique content changes or structured play which aren’t possible in the Wilderness.
• Competitive gaming compliments and adheres to the PvP vision, but it doesn’t dictate the vision.
• The act of killing players shouldn’t generate expected wealth gain in an abusable way.
• Onboarding new players is crucial, but not at the expense of core gameplay.

 

 

Possible 'consolidation' content changes:

Return of Bounty Hunter. We removed the content because of the level of abuse it faced. It will return with the potential for abuse reduced as much as possible. We expect this to be the earliest content to arrive, hopefully around the end of this month or early April.

Removal of PvP worlds. With this change we’re trying to solve the fragmentation of PKers. We understand that PvP worlds offer hotspots with convenient fights and a desirable combat level bracket, and we’ll do our utmost to offset this by creating similar hotspots in the Wilderness.

Restrict Wilderness access to specific worlds. Again, we’re trying to solve the fragmentation of PKers. Hundreds of game worlds have been added since Old School’s release. Whilst we could reduce their number, that’d have adverse effects elsewhere in the game by exacerbating competition for things like bosses and resources.

Remove High Risk worlds, replaced by Very High Risk worlds. Dying on these worlds will result in the loss of all items to create risk-heavy and exciting opportunities.

Moving Clan Wars and Last Man Standing to the Wilderness. They’re currently quite out of the way in the desert. We’d like to move the lobbies for these minigames to the Wilderness, like when Clan Wars was introduced to RuneScape. The lobby would be a safe area, reachable via teleport, and likely positioned to the west/south west of the Graveyard of Shadows. Our intention is to create a new hotspot of activity in the low-level Wilderness.

Resolve Last Man Standing quality issues. We’d like to remove the buy-in fee for the competitive game mode. We don’t think it’s necessary now that we’ve added a permanent High Stakes variant. We’d also want to reduce the number of F2P Last Man Standing worlds. We’re also investigating content changes to prevent ‘boxing’ from occurring during games.

Redesigning Wilderness bosses. We’re not happy with the quality of Wilderness bosses such as Callisto, Vet’ion and Venenatis. We’d like to give them actual mechanics and relocate them to suitable areas. We envisage a winding series of tunnels and chambers connecting the bosses with various cave entrances in the Wilderness overworld. Increasing the challenge offered by the bosses would also pave the way for buffing the drops and rewards offered.

W45 Deadman. Honestly, we’re not sure what to do with the Permanent Deadman world. We’d like to run a poll on W45 to gauge player opinion on how best to proceed. We’re open to resetting the game world (either once, or on a regular basis) and exploring cosmetic incentives or additional XP increase for continued play across resets.

Wilderness PJ timer. We understand that lone PKers would likely want a Wilderness PJ timer added to single-way combat areas, whereas PKers in clans might prefer it to remain as it currently is. We’re open to implementing one, whether in the whole Wilderness or just certain areas.

Last Man Standing queueing. We’d like to investigate whether we can queue players for Last Man Standing games, so that they can wait to join games whilst going about their ‘Scaping elsewhere in the game world. It wouldn’t be possible to do cross-world queueing, so we’d only implement it for themed worlds.

Wilderness Safe Respawn Area. To make it more convenient to return to persisting fights we’d like to add an option to respawn in the Wilderness, likely in the Clan Wars lobby.

 

Possible 'growth' content changes:

 

Onboard new PvPers. We’d like to introduce a tutorial-type piece of content for players who are new to the Wilderness or minigames like Last Man Standing. We’d focus on introducing players to concepts like switching gear, attack styles, and prayers.

Temporary Deadman events. We’d like to run regular Deadman Permadeath (you might call this the Final Hour) events, which are based on the short Deadman betas we’d run prior to our live broadcasts. This would precede the full return of Deadman.

New Clan Wars features. We’d work with clan leaders to identify valuable features and changes to add to the minigame.

New Last Man Standing features. Adding new maps and new account load-outs to Last Man Standing to increase the appeal and variety of the gameplay it offers.

New Castle Wars changes. Exploring things like shortening the match length and implementing team size caps, among other content changes. We’d work with the competitive Castle Wars community to identify the right features, and after any release we’d still want to offer a ‘Classic’ Castle Wars experience on themed worlds.

Wilderness Clans features. With the release of the Clans system we’ll explore whether there are any features we could implement to incentivise clan versus clan gameplay.

Wilderness expansion. We know there are various parts of the map that players would like to see expanded, like the Desert, but we’re also very keen on expanding the Wilderness and increasing the amount of content offered.

Competitive PvP program. Establishing a competitive program will include any return of Deadman, as well as structured esports.

Community PvP program. Empowering the community to operate their own events with prizing and structure, like always-on Clan Wars ladders or bespoke tournaments.

 

What's Next

We’ve shared as much insight as we’re able, but it’s your feedback that will guide and finalise the changes we’ll make. Once decisions have been made, we’ll compile a backlog and development roadmap which we’ll share with you.

These changes won’t happen overnight. We’re going to prioritise the consolidation changes whilst designing the growth changes. In the interest of transparency, this is not going to be an instance where we divert every Old School resource to working on PvP. Some changes will arrive soon, whereas others, like the Wilderness expansion, will be much further in the future.

 

Some great ideas within this, good to see Jagex finally telling us what they plan and acknowledging the toxic nature of the clan world too.

[WG Jester]

"Consolidate" can definitely end up meaning "we're going to narrow down which kind of PvP is going to be best for PKers and also the health of the game in general, and everyone else can play it or not", which is probably the better way to go. I kinda wish they'd approach a new skill in this manner.

[Hatred Sabre]

4 hours ago, Mojo said:

Toxicity. We’ve all seen the spade memes, but the reality is that the PvP scene can be daunting to new players because of the levels of toxicity associated with the community. Other games have seen great success in tackling toxicity in their PvP scene, and we must do the same.

GREAT

4 hours ago, Mojo said:

The act of killing players shouldn’t generate expected wealth gain in an abusable way.

4 hours ago, Mojo said:

Wilderness Safe Respawn Area. To make it more convenient to return to persisting fights we’d like to add an option to respawn in the Wilderness, likely in the Clan Wars lobby.

can i get my money back for the 5m edge respawn ples?

[WG HugBoat]

Interested to see how they move forward with this 

[JD]

i hate how they when they talk pvp they bring up castle wars/clan wars/lms, like you know thats not what anyone means by pvp updates. one big solution would be limit how many worlds you are able to go in wildy in. right now you have so many worlds to hop through if you were limited pvpers would find way more action

[Kriss]

I really like the guidance to new players. Would be awesome to see new kids stepping into the wild. Right now only the OG's are roaming in wild etc. New guys are too afraid to even try pking, cuz they get 1shot.

First update to come in the end of this month or beginning of april, so let's wait and hope for the best.

[WG Logout]

16 hours ago, Hatred Sabre said:

GREAT

can i get my money back for the 5m edge respawn ples?

I've gotten wayyyy more than 5m worth from edge respawn in the 6 months I've had it.

[Misdeal]

17 hours ago, JD said:

i hate how they when they talk pvp they bring up castle wars/clan wars/lms, like you know thats not what anyone means by pvp updates. one big solution would be limit how many worlds you are able to go in wildy in. right now you have so many worlds to hop through if you were limited pvpers would find way more action

Id support this if the wildy bosses were in safespots like kbd otherwise no

[supplied_def]

they should make PVP limited to PVP worlds only, and if you want to make PVP accounts then they should somehow make restrictions similar to ironmen, but in a manner where they can trade in normal worlds etc, trade loot to mains etc etc, but can only commit to PVP in said world.Safe for none pvpers, more activity for PVPers. maybe stupid idea but yeah, atleast its an idea..

 

still on hols ladies and gents hope all is well!

[JD]

19 hours ago, Misdeal said:

Id support this if the wildy bosses were in safespots like kbd otherwise no

then its not a wildy boss is it lol

[Misdeal]

58 minutes ago, JD said:

then its not a wildy boss is it lol

 Is kbd not considered a wildy boss? Was a great compromise until jagex released the burning amulet.

[Mojo]

it's highly unlikely that Jagex would move a boss that was in a PvP area into a safe area.

[Ivory Blade]

On 3/12/2020 at 9:34 PM, JD said:

i hate how they when they talk pvp they bring up castle wars/clan wars/lms, like you know thats not what anyone means by pvp updates. 

I agree with this completely. They should refer to these things separately as combat minigames. 

 

On 3/13/2020 at 2:51 PM, Misdeal said:

Id support this if the wildy bosses were in safespots like kbd otherwise no

 

If they place the overworked wilderness bosses in safe zones, then they would likely become too safe like KBD. 

10 hours ago, Mojo said:

it's highly unlikely that Jagex would move a boss that was in a PvP area into a safe area.

 

I hope this is the case. However I notice that on their list of things, there are a lot of places a mistake like this could happen and the wilderness could be made too safe. Since they list so many changes, I expect at least one of these changes to have a negative impact (based on the statistics alone).

[Misdeal]

2 hours ago, Ivory Blade said:

 

If they place the overworked wilderness bosses in safe zones, then they would likely become too safe like KBD. 

 

I hope this is the case. However I notice that on their list of things, there are a lot of places a mistake like this could happen and the wilderness could be made too safe. Since they list so many changes, I expect at least one of these changes to have a negative impact (based on the statistics alone).

I think it should be like a 2 minute run to get to the safespots. Not like a burning amulet teleport to right outside the lair.

[Ivory Blade]

17 hours ago, Misdeal said:

I think it should be like a 2 minute run to get to the safespots. Not like a burning amulet teleport to right outside the lair.

When a route to a safe spot exists in the wilderness, the best way to PK someone is to camp that route until they appear.

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, however sometimes you just want to kill someone and screw the wait.  This is currently possible at bosses like Calisto, where the only wait involved is the short time spent world hopping. 

[Ghost Sabre]

Lots of talk let's see if they take any real action and end up being capable of pulling it off.

 

Definitely good for the game to address the fragmentation of PKers and try things out to bring more activity to the wilderness. I've been alking about and hoping for a wilderness expansion for a long time!

[Generic Kemp]

On 3/11/2020 at 11:41 PM, Mojo said:

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/gielinor-gazette-march-2020?oldschool=1

 

 

Some great ideas within this, good to see Jagex finally telling us what they plan and acknowledging the toxic nature of the clan world too.

Looks like some great ideas, just need to see how they end up being implemented 

[XxBlieksxX]

they are gonna butcher PVP just like when they destroyed free trading lmfao. I am no expert PKer by any means but the only ones trying to benefit from PVMing honestly if they do not like getting killed they shouldn't be out there

[Vacccine]

I think they're working super slow on tackling the progress of PvP due to how Jagex lost a huge amount of their player base when EOC came out.  I hope they listen to the community well and run a lot of betas before they commit to a change. 

[McMill]

The expansion on the clan system is well overdue, rolling restarts on regular deadman mode sounds great. I am anxious to see how jagged plans on polling pvp content, as we know pvmers shoot us down every time and the resentment sucks. I want to see how they will separate the polls. The way it is looking this could be the year of the pker!

[Elkanath]

Not a pker, just grinding pvm for my stats for right now but I really want to get in on it soon. Hoping they add these wildy hubs like back in the day or something. I get the wilderness is supposed to be a barren wasteland, but not THIS barren lol